Beringia should more properly be viewed as a lost continent than as a land bridge. The term land bridge gives the impression that people raced across a narrow isthmus to reach Alaska. The oceanographic data clearly show that during the LGM, the land bridge was twice the size of Texas. If the Out of Beringia model is correct, Beringia wasn’t a crossing point, but a homeland, a place where people lived for many generations, sheltering from an inhospitable climate and slowly evolving the genetic variation unique to their Native American descendants (10).
